Will Afghanistan become the world’s largest open-air prison?

The day before Kabul fell to the Taliban, Salima Mazari, district governor near Mazar-e-Sharif, said this to the Associated Press:

“There will be no place for women. In the provinces controlled by the Taliban, no women exist there anymore, not even in the cities. They are all imprisoned in their homes.”

Other than former colleagues, I don’t have a personal connection to Afghanistan and have never been there. The closest I’ve gotten was standing on the banks of the Amu Darya River on the Tajikistan side, looking south across the border at the legendary country and “graveyard of empires”. But it is hard not to feel that what is happening in Afghanistan affects us all.

Scenes of desperate Afghans crowding outside of Kabul’s international airport have dominated the news as the US and NATO military withdraw. In pulling out, the West is abandoning its incomplete state-building project. It is also abandoning most of the people of Afghanistan to their fate.

What is shocking about the unfolding crisis in Afghanistan is that it has happened so rapidly, and to so many people at once. 40 million, to be precise. First the swift takeover by the Taliban. Then the shutting down of the country’s borders, and now Kabul’s international airport.

With the near complete takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban, Afghan evacuees and refugees are the lucky ones. They’ve made it out. Everyone else is waking up in a country that could turn into the world’s largest open-air prison.

And Afghan women potentially face a triple exclusion. They will be prevented from leaving the country, prevented from working, and confined to their homes.

With the Taliban in control of all border points and access to the airport, virtually all Afghans are being blocked from leaving the country. Not being allowed out is a particularly severe form of exclusion. Ask any prisoner. Or anyone from the former East Germany, or North Korea, or Gaza.

It could well be that Afghan women will no longer be able to participate in professional and civic life. Reports are emerging that women have already been sent home from schools and workplaces.

Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, said that women should stay home, for their own safety.

Depending on who joins or allies with the Taliban, people will sort themselves into either guards or prisoners.

And, as in a prison, it seems likely that neither privacy nor property rights will be respected. People are vulnerable to searches of their homes and cell phones anytime a man with a gun shows up at their door. Under previous Taliban rule, women were not even safe in their own homes.

Even worse, this could be a prison full of untrained rogue “guards”. It is an open question how much control the Taliban leadership has over its men.

In advising women not to leave their home, Mr. Mujahid noted that the Taliban’s “security forces are not trained [in] how to deal with women – how to speak to women [for] some of them.”

Now, just take a moment to picture the Taliban training its forces on how to deal with and speak to women. Try not to laugh…or cry.

It is one thing to end a war and leave in haste. It is another to condemn the country’s citizens to become prisoners in their own land.

Let’s assume that no country is going to be able to defend humanitarian rights in Afghanistan. The leverage that the outsider world still has –the Taliban need money to govern – will be used to ensure internal stability and avoid more chaos that would contribute to an outflow of refugees.

So, now the fundamental question becomes: What can other countries do, from outside the prison walls, to help the Afghan people, and in particular, its women and girls?

I don’t have an answer.

In the meantime, @LinaAbiRafeh, intrepid women’s rights activist, is posting ways you can help.